Hi. Today I’m going to tell you how to prepare for the GitOps Fundamentals certification.
The GitOps Fundamentals certificate has been prepared by Codefresh, the company that is the author of the software development lifecycle automation and management platform of the same name. This certificate is designed for people who want to learn the basics of the GitOps methodology and see how they work in practice using the ArgoCD tool.
What is GitOps?
GitOps is an approach to software deployment and infrastructure management in which the state of the environment is described as code (Infrastructure as Code, IaC) and stored in a Git repository. GitOps uses Git repositories as the source of truth for infrastructure and application configuration. With this approach, each update is made through changes to the code stored in the Git repository.
Although GitOps is not a formal standard, it is now widely used by companies and organizations, especially those using containerization and the cloud, to speed up software development and improve infrastructure reliability.
What is ArgoCD?
Argo CD is an open-source Continuous Deployment (CD) tool based on the GitOps approach. It allows automatic deployment of applications and configurations on a Kubernetes cluster based on definitions stored in a Git repository. The tool is particularly useful in environments where Kubernetes containers and clusters are used. It is particularly appreciated for its simplicity (very good GUI), performance and extensibility (lots of plugins).
GitOps Fundamentals course
Codefresh is mainly known for its CI/CD platform. However, in addition to their core business, they are also involved in spreading knowledge about DevOps and GitOps best practices. The result of these activities is also the GitOps Fundamentals training course, after which one can become a certified GitOps specialist.
The training is available at: https://learning.codefresh.io/course/gitops-with-argo and costs $49.95.
The GitOps Fundamentals training itself consists of five modules:
- About GitOps – here we get introduced with the basics of GitOps. What this practice is, what it features and why it is so popular.
- ArgoCD basics – in this module we learn the basics of the ArgoCD tool. Here we have the opportunity to install ArgoCD and run our first application using the tool.
- Using ArgoCD – this module is devoted to more advanced topics, such as synchronizing the environment, handling helms and using passwords
- Progressive Delivery – in this chapter we will learn about different techniques for deploying changes to production (blue/green and canaries deployment)
- Summary and examination – this is the last chapter dedicated to the summary of the course and the exam itself, after which we receive a certificate
Each module consists of three parts:
- Theoretical introduction (a few slides at most)
- exercises related to GitOps in ArgoCD running in the sandbox
- test
The training lasts about 4-5 hours and depends mainly on how much time you want to spend practicing.
The best part of this training, in my opinion, is the environment in which we run the exercises. During the assignments, we get access to a fully working ArgoCD tool, where we run applications, deploy changes, etc. In this way, we have the opportunity to learn GitOps practices on a living organism.
There is also nothing stopping us from using this environment to test our applications as an exercise.
Here it is still worth mentioning that in several exercises it is necessary to use a cloned repository from GitHub with code for tasks. Therefore, it is advisable to create an account with this service if you do not already have one.
GitOps Fundamentals exam
After completing the course, you can take the exam. The exam is a single-choice test and is very similar to the tests we have after each module. The test consists of about a dozen questions. To pass the exam you need to answer about 90% of the questions. In my case, I passed the test the second time.
After passing the exam, you can generate a certificate as a PDF file as well as brag about it on social networks. It’s a pity that the badge was missing, which can be added to the credly portal 🙂
Bonus
If you want to see what the training is like without having to pay you can check it out by watching this video on Youtube:
In the video above, Dan Garfiled, co-founder of Codefresh, demonstrates the entire course with exercises. Over the course of the 7.5-hour video, he demonstrates the GitOps Fundamentals course and the GitOps at Scale course, which is a follow-up to the former.
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